Wealthtech is a lesser known little brother to fintech that has slowly been gaining a strong footing in Switzerland.
The term refers to companies that use tech like robo-advisors and automation to digitise the wealth and asset management sector. Today, the market for net investable assets exceeds US$55,000 billion, and projected to reach US$69,607 billion by 2021.
According to Investsuite, the global robo-advisory market is estimated to grow up to 6–13 trillion US$ by 2025.
With big money involved, it’s no surprise that wealthtech is one of the fastest growing verticals in fintech, attracting US$4.6 billion in funding since 2014.
In Switzerland in particular, the industry is hitting critical mass, now housing some 75 companies according to Swisscom’s monthly Fintech Startup Map.
Volumes bear well for the industry, but may be confusing for a beginner to navigate. Therefore, we present a glimpse into seven of Switzerland’s more interesting wealthtechs, that either offer a bigger variety of wealthtech services than average, or tackling the industry with an innovative zeal.
Investsuite
Investsuite is a wealthtech that operates a suite of B2B products in the space, including modular API-based robo-advisory, a white-labelled online retail trading platform, and a humanised portfolio storyteller. The company’s algorithmic robo-advisory framework was built around a fourth generation approach to risk, which the company claims is two steps above a VaR based approach and three above a Volatility based approach.
The company is based in Belgium and Poland, with presences in Denmark, Germany, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Switzerland and the UK—with aspirations towards the Middle East and Asia.
Investsuite’s target market include retail banks, private banks, wealth managers, brokers, insurers and pension funds.
AAAccell
Founded in 2014, AAAccell, which stands for Academic excellence, Artificial intelligence, and Algorithmic power, is a leading quantitative fintech specialized in risk and asset management, and a spin-off company of the University of Zurich. The company develops and provides quant-solutions helping financial institutions, banks, insurances, and asset managers including UBS, Zurich or Rothschild to stay ahead of their competition.
Currently, AAAccell’s solutions cover risk and asset management, data provisioning, fund management, alternative investments and forex hedging. The company has developed an AI robo-solution, called Portfolio Selection and Active Risk Monitoring (PSARM), which operates at a so-called risk fear portfolio strategy, combining portfolio optimization respectively selection with active risk monitoring.
AAAccell has two offices in Zurich and one office in South Korea.
AlgoTrader
Based in Zurich and founded in 2014, AlgoTrader is a company providing a fully-integrated algorithmic trading software solution for conducting quantitative research, trading strategy development, strategy back-testing and automated trading deployment.
The system allows trading firms full automation of their trading strategies and provides everything a typical quantitative hedge fund needs on a daily basis to run their operation. It handles all the tedious aspects of quant modelling and strategy development: strategy wizards, embedded valuation and technical analysis libraries, all common trading methods, configurable back-testing framework, reference data starters, inbound FIX adapters, public REST endpoints, historical data services and market data/broker/exchange adapters.
AlgoTrader has offices in Zurich and New Jersey. The company serves hedge funds, proprietary traders, banks, crypto funds and brokers and has over 50 paying clients including AegisCo Asset Management, Custodigit, Bitcoin Suisse and Quantum Rock.
NVISO
NVISO is a Swiss fintech company providing software that can sense, comprehend and act upon human behavior using emotion analytics.
NVISO has developed a technology that detects human emotions from facial micro-expressions and interprets thinking styles, revealing how investors truly feel about financial topics, financial choices and financial markets.
Using an ordinary webcam or smartphone, the emotion recognition software analyzes the clients while they watch a short video of various life scenarios to reveal their true feelings about their financial priorities.
The solution then delivers a personalized report that allows clients and their advisors to make better financial decisions based on how they feel about their finances.
Besides wealth management, NVISO’s technology is also used in other fields and industries including healthcare and vehicle driver monitoring.
NVISO was founded in 2009 and is headquartered at the Innovation Park of the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland.
Additiv
Established in 1998, Additiv is a leading provider in the field of digitalisation of wealth management. The company develops and implements digital innovations and business models for financial services providers.
It offers digital solutions based on its Digital Finance Suite (DFS), a software platform for the creation and operation of digital offerings, including services and products with various business models for different customer segments and target groups.
Additiv’s new Digital Finance Software-as-a-Service is based on the fourth generation of its DFS platform and allows financial institutions to deploy client advisory, servicing and expert tools in wealth and asset management for the digitalization of new and existing business segments.
Additiv has offices in Switzerland and Singapore and development centers in Romania, Ukraine and Vietnam. The company serves clients including PT. Bank Commonwealth (PTBC), the Indonesian subsidiary of Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), Credit Exchange AG (CredEx), a provider in the Swiss mortgage market, and Orange Business Services, the B2B branch of the Orange Group.
Finhorizon
Finhorizon is a finance information firm founded in 2014 and based in Zurich. The company offers two main solutions.
Fairvalues provides the basis for a consistent client advisory process which fulfills the regulatory requirements and allows the ongoing testing of investments regarding clients’ suitability and appropriateness. Fairvalues ensures a stringent and clear communication of investment information and monitoring of investment portfolios across the client base.
Fairforecasts is a quantitative approach to analyze big data and render smart data to assess the potential of investment alternatives. The applied scientific algorithm merges all sources of predictions, including the users’ view, to a unique risk-return forecast landscape. This research approach ensures insights with higher levels of prediction accuracy. All research results are presented by self-evident visualized performance indicators. Finhorizon provides Fairforecasts as an internal investment research platform or a service.
Clevercircles
Clevercircles is a next generation robo-advisor launched by Bank CIC. Developed in partnership with Swiss IT services provider ti&m, Clevercircles combines collective intelligence with financial investments.
Clevercircles allows clients to have an influence at the asset allocation level by combining human intelligence and machine efficiency, and can be used as a white-label solution. The solution enables users to manage their own tactical asset allocation, while comparing their opinions against others of their choosing or against the “crowd.”
This makes Clevercircles the first asset management platform to combine the intelligence of people with the efficiency of machines.
Clevercircles also offers a version of its technology known as “crowd advice” to B2B clients such as other banks, insurers and asset managers.